“All right,” Arthur replied; “you’re sure it won’t be too far for you, and you don’t mind going alone?”
“Of course not,” said Jerry, already turning to go. But with an “I say, Jerry,” Arthur wheeled back again. “It’s looking awfully heavy over there,” he said, pointing to the slate-blue darkness of the sky towards the north; “they say it’s sure to snow before night. Make the best of your way home. You know the shortest way—the footpath over the stile just beyond the ‘Jolly Thrashers’?”
Jerry nodded. Truth to tell, he had but a vague idea of it, but he could ask—and he must be off.
“Or,” said Arthur, making Jerry nearly stamp with impatience, “perhaps, after all, you’d better keep to the high road. There’s a strong chance of your falling in with Sam—he won’t have got back yet.”
“All right, all right,” Jerry called back, and then he set off at the nearest approach to a run his poor stiffened knee could achieve.
He looked at his watch as he ran—only twenty-five minutes to three! barely five minutes since he had signalled to Arthur! Jerry relaxed his speed—it was scarcely possible that Miss Meredon was near Silverthorns yet.
He walked on quietly, past the second entrance, and along what from a certain corner was called the Wortherham road, till he came to the first Silverthorns lodge. Then he began to breathe more freely; “the girl,” as he always mentally dubbed her, could not enter the grounds now without his seeing her. He looked at his watch for the third time—seventeen minutes to three. Just about the time he had planned. She should be here soon if she had left Miss Lloyd’s a little after two.
But he had been walking up and down the short stretch of road between the so-called first lodge and the next corner fully twenty minutes before at last the sound of wheels reached him clearly through the frosty air, though still at some distance. Hitherto he had not gone beyond the corner—it would have made him feel more nervous somehow to look all along the great bare road; but now he gathered up his courage and walked briskly on. He was still cold, and beginning to feel tired too, but new vigour seemed to come to him when at last he was able to distinguish that the approaching vehicle was a pony-carriage, and the Silverthorns one no doubt; not that he knew it, or the pony, or the driver by sight, but it was not very likely that any other would be coming that way just at that time.
Jerry stood by the side of the road, then he walked on a few steps, then waited again. The sound of the wheels drew nearer and nearer, and he heard too the tinkling of a bell on the pony’s neck. Then he distinguished that, as he expected, the carriage was driven by a lady, and then—it seemed to come up so fast, that in another moment it would have passed him like a flash had he not resolutely stepped forward a little on to the road, taking his cap off obtrusively as he did so.
“Miss—Miss Meredon,” he said in his thin, clear boy’s voice. “I beg your pardon.”